Dan Melchior is easily one of the most prolific songwriters on this stupid Earth. Just over the past couple of months, the dude has come out with a handful of singles (two on Columbus Discount Records, one on the new Convulsive Records imprint, and another on Dullknife Records), and a double album on SS Records, and to date he has released over forty records since the mid-90s, far more than any other artist that comes to mind, save for Billy Childish. And he does it without hardly a dud in the mix, it's crazy––The guy is like some kind of song factory freak.
As part of Columbus Discount Records Singles Club, Dan Melchior's new incarnation, Dan Melchior und das Menace came out with one of his most interesting singles so far. As a man known for digging on the old blues, folk, and gospel tunes and injecting his sharp edge of modern punk and garage serum, it's when he ventures outside of his tender and venomous musing that his songwriting brilliance really shines the brightest. Here on the new single on Columbus Discount Records (available only through the exclusive, pre-booked singles club and directly from Mr. Melchior himself), Melchior takes his song sack out and slaps a couple of doozies on us. On the A-side's "Post Office Line," he spews his profound mastery of the downtrodden antisocial viewpoint in a whirling nightmare of cheap organs and drums that sound like rust-fucked machinery pulsating in a coagulation of self-defining social angst, that, for some of us, shows itself inwardly in such aggravating and monotonous tasks as stand in line at the post office. On the flip side, in a song titled "Tourist," Melchior posts his usual "them vs. him" scenario in a gut-twisting song that breaks between bursts of now-wave noise and softly sung stanzas tormented from the numb empathy of out-of-town house guests, to the snagging coils of urban living that will have you shaving your eyebrows and drooling for some kind of no-wavy jazz weirdo shit. This is such a great single.
Don't fret if you passed on the Columbus Discount Singles Club, because you can get this single directly from Melchior's site here. And while you're at it, Pick up the Convulsive and Dullknife singles, and you'd be a straight-up fool if you didn't pick up his double album on SS records, too.
